“I think my wish will come true,” I heard Miss O’Neill say to Mike, as they walked ahead of us up the rough road to the hotel.
I did not hear Mike’s reply but it seemed to please her immensely.
I resumed my talk with Mr. O’Neill about Ireland. I asked him about recent land laws. I found him enthusiastic about the Wyndham Act of 1903, providing for the purchase of their farms by Irish tenants.
“It means a new Ireland inside a generation,” he earnestly exclaimed. He then went on to say that the Irish people as a whole, the native Celt, the descendants of the Scotch, English and French, were developing a distinctive modern Irish race, which would be able to hold its own in every department of life. This led him to speak of the Irish people in America, and I found he had followed the fortunes of his countrymen across the sea. He was delighted when I told him that Mike and I were Irish Yankees.
“County Antrim ought to be a sacred place to you,” he said to me, “for two of your great Presidents traced their ancestory to Antrim.” He went on to tell me that President Jackson’s father sailed from Carrickfergus, near Belfast, in 1765, going to North Carolina. He also told me that the great-great-grandfather of President McKinley emigrated from Conagher, County Antrim, in 1743. He had himself seen the old McKinley homestead. Mr. O’Neill and I were on such good terms of real friendship that very evening, that I could hardly believe it possible I had only met him that day. I believe it was the Irish atmosphere.
CHAPTER XI
A FLIGHT IN AN AEROPLANE WITH AN IRISH GIRL
Next morning at breakfast Miss O’Neill again asked her father’s permission to ascend in the aeroplane with Mike. I assured him that if Mike promised to go over land there was absolutely no danger, for, as I put it: “Mr. Connor can alight as easily as a crow.”
“But what if he were to alight on a tree?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye, which showed me that Mike and Miss O’Neill were going to fly together all right.